To live free like the tree

Founded on National Day 1983 as the Gréng Alternativ Partei (GAP), the Greens managed to win two seats in the Chamber in the 1984 legislative elections just one year later, before they fell out so badly that they split into two separate parties. They split into the aforementioned GAP (to which the current green deputy prime minister François Bausch belonged) and the GLEI (Gréng Lëscht Ekologesch Initiativ, to which the former green deputy prime minister Félix Braz belonged in those years), both of which took part in the 1989 elections with their own lists and each won two seats in parliament. In 1994, the two parties then put up a joint list again, to officially reunite in 1995 and assume government responsibility for the first time in December 2013.

"Solidary as the forest"

So much for the green story in fast forward, but in reality, it is of course a lot more tingling. In any case, the Greens did not sit well with the Lëtzebuerger Journal at the time, as the following assessment by then editor-in-chief Rob Roemen from the mid-1980s should make clear: "It would indeed be a waste of votes to trust this divided entity, a false grassroots democracy on a crumbling structure, with real political influence. The Green experiment, which has been more or less successful in various neighbouring countries, cannot succeed in this country because it is merely imitated by a few gamblers (…)." Well, the man was to be mistaken …